Let me put it this way

If anyone finds part of the newspaper in Scout's diaper in the next few days, I'm not going to be all that surprised.

Make that three

Out for a drive with Rob and Scout:

Me (to Scout): I love you so much. I feel so full--I am in the car with two people I am completely in love with.

Rob: Scout and yourself?

A new obsession

Last night Liz, Rob, Rob and I went to see Margot & the Nuclear So and So's at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Liz and her Rob got me the tickets for my birthday, and we had an excellent dinner at Baker & Banker beforehand.

As you may have guessed, we don't go to shows very often these days. Or dinner. Or movies. Or the shower...well, to be fair, that's just me. Rob manages to stay pretty clean on a daily basis. Anyway. It was a fabulous night and the band was incredible. Their music has been described as chamber pop, but last night they were pretty stripped down and more folk rock. The lead singer, Richard Edwards, came out alone for the encore and did three songs with just his guitar. I now want to listen to their music all day long, Google them and read interviews, obsess over their ages--I still think all musicians, athletes and actors should be older than me, but I've found it doesn't work that way--and just generally stalk them.

It's a good thing I have so much extra time in my day for activities like this. Between work, taking care of the baby, grocery shopping, showering and making dinner, let's take a guess at what will be the first thing to go. I'll give you a hint. It's showering.

Let them eat acne cream

From an article in the New York Times:

[[...nursing mothers will not be allowed to use their tax-sheltered health care accounts to pay for breast pumps and other supplies.

That is because the Internal Revenue Service has ruled that breast-feeding does not have enough health benefits to quality as a form of medical care. ]]

and...

[[A study released this year by Harvard Medical School concluded that if 90 percent of mothers followed the standard medical advice of feeding infants only breast milk for their first six months, the United States could save $13 billion a year in health care costs and prevent the premature deaths of 900 infants each year from respiratory illness and other infections. ]]

It's so funny, because just the other day I was thinking, really what is the difference between the IRS and the medical research community? I mean...can you think of anything?

What the hell is a yoga hug?

Tonight I went to yoga, while Rob stayed home and watched Scout via the video monitor. When I got home, he was in the kitchen.

"Give me a hug," I said, and he did.

After a few moments he broke away and narrowed his eyes.

"What was that for?" he asked suspiciously. "Was that a yoga hug?"

Did they not have the budget to hire a copy editor?

I just watched the trailer for Clint Eastwood's new movie Hereafter, and whoa. Major typo in the text of the trailer--they spelled beginning "begining". I would link to it, but I can't find it anywhere online--the typo isn't in the official trailer. How do you make a mistake like that when you only have about 15 words to read?

Not wrong, just different

So, this is embarrassing, but I have recently discovered (by way of others pointing and laughing at me) that I don't pronounce the word "ancient" like a normal person does. Apparently, the rest of you say aint-shunt. Me, I say aink-shunt. I'm not sure why. I called my parents and made them pronounce the word. Turns out I didn't learn it from them.

I felt slightly mollified when I read in Merriam Webster's that there are two ways to pronounce ancient; both my way and everyone else's way are legit. But no one else really seems to use my way. Where did I first hear this word?

Rob suggests that it was taught to me by my ank-cestors.

Motherhood

I don't have much of a right to expect that anyone is actually still reading this blog, unless you are one of those people who has no short term memory and likes seeing the same thing over and over again, day after day. Is that you? If it is, you probably don't even know...I feel sorry for you. But I'm glad you're still reading Deepish Thoughts.

For the rest of you, I wanted to direct you today to a contest over at Robotic Uprising. Moms, send in a 500-word essay on what motherhood means to you, and Cameron will post it. If you enter, you get a cupcake! Although Cameron will probably eat it for you. But wouldn't it be nice to give Cameron a reason to have a cupcake?

You can read about the contest here, read Cameron's essay here, and read mine here.

The Meat Eater Makes a Joke

Rob and I are ordering food from Burma Superstar. Rob is perusing the menu online.

Rob: Ok, I'm ready. I guess I'll have the tofu with noodles and vegetables.

[I wait.]

Rob: Just kidding!

[He ordered the Burmese Style Curry with Lamb.]

Just Like Her Mother

Rob [hugging me]: You're short.

[Brief Pause]

Rob: Poor Scout.

Me: Why?

Rob: She's going to be a munchkin with an attitude problem.

Drink Me

The oldest drinkable bottles of champagne in the world were found recently on the floor of the Baltic Sea, and are going to auction for about $69,000 per bottle. If anyone wants to get in on that, let me know. i've got about $60 in my wallet.

Partners

Watching The Best of Youth the other night after Scout went to bed:

Me (moved by a plot line about a father raising his daughter alone): Can you imagine raising Scout without me?

Rob (without looking away from the television): Yep.

Sleep

If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters. ~Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis

Sometimes in the middle of the night, Scout's crying seamlessly finds a place in my dreams, so that Rob has to nudge me gently to say the baby's up, and I say, I know I know, I was just working on waking. Other times, I am up throughout the night, checking the clock, checking the baby monitor, ready for her noises to start. These, of course, are the nights that she chooses to sleep through, and I am too wired to take advantage. I'm being trained, apparently, to be a piece of toast. I don't think I could sleep 8 hours if I tried.

Instead of watching another episode of Glee...

It seems time to post to Deepish Thoughts once again. Actually, it seemed time to do that about...oh, every day for the past 4 months, but I've been a little bit busy with, you know, things.

Rob and I have now lived in San Francisco for almost 9 months--a gestation period--so our final verdict on this round of West Coast living should be delivered pretty soon. I am truly happy being here, especially now that we have welcomed a fat baby into our lives and can explore the city and surroundings with her. On her schedule. At her disposal. The other day we were walking down the street, Scout in the Ergo Baby Carrier, me skipping around trying to get her comfortable, holding her hands so they didn't get chilly, and singing some ridiculous song to distract her from the fact that she was basically trapped, once again. If I'd had some grapes I would have fed them to her while I gave her a back massage. She is so clearly in charge of this family.

Rob has been biking regularly, working up to getting in shape for the Marin Century, which is a 100-mile bike ride taking place in August. Encouraged by this, I have decided to train to be able to run 3 miles without collapsing or peeing in my pants. We'll see how it goes.

Scout is in training to continue resembling Robert Duvall, as she has lost most of her hair in what looks exactly like male pattern baldness. So we're all pretty busy.

The three of us had a speaking engagement last night, wherein we addressed a group of pregnant women and their partners at a childbirth class. We told them Scout's birth story and I think avoided terrifying them too much, mostly because I had asked Rob in advance to please not use the word "excruciating."

I don't want to overdo it on my first post in a while, and I hear Scout singing in her room, where she is supposed to be napping but apparently did not get that memo.

Lakers Win Finals, Ridiculous Interview Ensues

Dude, did you seriously just thank your psychiatrist?

Practice

Last week, I was on the phone with a friend who has a toddler. For good reason, she often spells words she doesn't want her daughter repeating. Example from our conversation:

Friend: There was lots of drama.

Friend's baby in background: Drama! Drama!

Friend: It was total C-R-A-P.

Friend's baby: Want more water.

So, it works, you see. I've decided to practice this method of parenting, but since Scout is too young to repeat anything, I'm going to do it in a slightly different way. Example from a potential future conversation:

Friend: The guy was a total P-R-I-C-K.

Me: Yeah, that fucking sucks, R-I-G-H-T?

I think it will be good to get a head start on this.

Lost in Translation

I'm typically up with Scout at 4am these days, so I often read the New York Times on my phone while she eats. In between stories of car bombs in Manhattan and deadly protests in Greece, I came across an amusing slideshow entitled "A Sampling of Chinglish."

Papa

My grandparents came to see Scout last week and Papa did what he does best: Brandy Manhattans.



And THEN...

Deepish Scout

Motivated by Ellie and The Emerson Show, I'm starting a blog for Scout: The Scarlett Letters. As the name suggests, it will eventually be a blog written to Scout from her mama, but for now will just be photos since her mama's brain is operating at a reduced capacity.

I hope this isn't the end of Deepish Thoughts, but until I start having some thoughts, we'll probably be on hiatus.

The Daily Show

My friend John sent me this link--a hilarious, yet totally infuriating, segment on the US/Russia nuclear agreement.

Since my days consist of feeding the baby, staring at the baby, changing the baby, and thinking about how I used to shower more often, I haven't watched The Daily Show lately. But I really should.

Check it out if you haven't seen it yet. Or watch it again.

Our little man

Everyone thinks Scout is a boy. Normally it's not people who know her, but people we see on the street and in stores. "He's so cute!" they say, and I just say thank you because I'm not really in the business of gender education. But it's become clear to me that you have to cover your daughter in pink if people are to recognize her for the dainty, feminine being that she is.

I had Scout dressed in an orange Moby wrap and a green hat one day, and a cream onesie another day. Apparently, this screams BOY. Even to Rob. The other night when she was crying, he said, "What's this about? We don't cry here, Mister." So, you see, the clothes can really fool you, even if you're her DAD.

Scout's first bath

Scout takes a bath



And is eaten by a frog



She has taken several baths since this first one, and now cries only when we take her out of the water.

As if she will never eat again

Scout is occasionally convinced that she is a wild animal and must fight for her food. At these times, she uses a variety of kung fu moves that she perfected in the womb to chop and scratch at her food source: me. We call her the Ferocious Beast. In fact, she usually ends up dominating only her own wrist, which has thus far not produced milk. We then have to take several breaks before she calms down enough to realize she's really more like a farm animal than a wild animal.

She still spends most of her time asleep, probably dreaming of the hunt.

Scarlett Joan Goulding has arrived!

Scarlett actually arrived last Tuesday, March 23rd at 4:33am, but I've been a little busy since then. It feels funny to type her full name, since we're calling her Scout and it seems to fit her perfectly. She is a little replica of Rob, so another nickname is Roblett. She is thus far a champion among babies--a good eater, a sound sleeper, and a very sweet observer of everything that goes on around her.

The labor was intense, and I won't get into details here, lest I frighten anyone. Suffice it to say it was all well worth it, and we stuck to our birth plan, with much help from our incredible doula, Angelika (below, holding Scout in her lady bug blanket.) The plan was to have the baby with no interventions (induction, pain medication, serious talk about rehab, etc), and oh my god it hurt worse than anything I have ever experienced in my life. I think Rob is probably still traumatized from watching me go through it, but he did an amazing job of helping to keep me calm and focused. And now we have our beautiful baby girl, and we are completely content just staring at her all day long.

It's my last day of work and this is what I want to blog about

Ok, in the interest of pushing my Devito picture further down the page, I am sharing with you today the preview for the upcoming film Eat, Pray, Love. I have a few friends who couldn't stand the book (sorry, guys), but I really liked it.

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I also enjoyed this talk that Elizabeth Gilbert gave on creativity.

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Whatever Devito

Clearly my vanity abandoned me somewhere in my ninth month of pregnancy.

Why?

A conversation with my three-year-old neighbor, D:

Me: D, the baby is moving. Do you want to feel?

D (with a cursory hand swipe at my stomach): Why is the baby in there?

Me: Because she's still cooking. And when she's ready she'll come out.

D: What is she cooking?

Me: Oh, hmmm...maybe cooking was not the right word...

D: Why is she cooking?

Me: Well, I mean, she's still growing. She has to get bigger before she comes out.

Silence.

D: Why is she cooking?

Me: Because she's hungry. She's making a snack.

Things You Need to Know

I drove Rob to work today, and I'm so glad I did, because otherwise I would never have known about these new chickens that are split down the middle, half male and half female. And then what would I have to show for my day?

A Perfect Match

Here's something that happens a lot: Rob gets compared to celebrities. He's been told he looks like Brett Favre, Richard Gere, Ben Affleck, John Corbett...recently his sister even told him he reminds her of Jim Carrey. Do any of those people even look alike? It doesn't matter--apparently Rob resembles them all.

Feeling left out, I scoured the web to find my celebrity lookalike, and the results are in.



I'm Danny Devito.

The Oscars

Well, Hurt Locker. I guess you pretty much stole the show. I have to say, I think you deserve the awards and accolades, though there probably was something to that whole "the academy wants to punish the insufferable James Cameron" rumor. Note that I don't personally know James Cameron and that the word insufferable was in quotes.

Liz and Rob came over for the show, which was on at the blissful west coast time of 5:30pm. Perfect for a person who can barely keep her eyes open past 10pm. Among other things, we ate tomato tartlets (super easy to make) and dirty potatoes (also easy, which is a new requirement for any food I cook). Liz and Rob brought a fancy salad in a fancy salad bowl, and cupcakes, which they LEFT HERE and I am going to throw them out. Soon. Maybe. After I lick the icing off.

They also brought adorable gifts for the baby that they picked up at the Alameda Flea Market yesterday. If I told you the baby's room was all ready to go, it would be a big, big lie. But we're getting there.

37 Weeks

Our baby education continues. 6 weeks of childbirth class culminated in me eating bunches of cookies while we listened to a couple talk about the birth of their adorable, massive-cheeked 5-week old AND in a horrific video of a woman with hemorrhoids the size of large grapes giving birth to twins in her bathroom, during which I did not eat cookies. We are heading to Breastfeeding class tonight and Parenting class on Saturday. Yes, Rob is attending the breastfeeding class. Yes, I suppose this might be one example of the ways in which I am slowly but steadily emasculating him. But these people are the experts and they recommend that partners attend class. What's a chubby girl to do?

We're also still reading, although I admit I have been way more into reading the stack of books my friend Mark sent me from his company than the stack of parenting books that continue to pile up around me. I just finished Men and Dogs, a novel by Katie Crouch that comes out next month. And I am currently reading a thriller by Michael Koryta called So Cold the River. That comes out in June. Both are recommended, even though I'm only halfway through the Koryta. I am driven to distraction by the book and would much rather curl up on the couch with its creepiness than read about ways to get my baby to sleep better. I realize I am likely making a mistake with this decision. Later, when I'm up all night with a crying baby, maybe I'll reread these books. Or maybe I'll just cry, too.

I'm still going to prenatal yoga, and feeling an almost desperate need for it at least twice a week. There's something so reassuring about sitting around with other front-heavy gals, talking about our situations. And some of these women are going through much tougher times than I: jobs lost, big moves ahead, abnormal sonograms, swollen ankles. It puts things in perspective and gives me a sense of community.

My latest addition to the pregnancy curriculum is Acupuncture. As I type this, I have four needles in my ear that are working on making my back feel better (I see you rolling your eyes, Mom.) I spent 90 minutes with the acupuncturist yesterday. She lectured me on staying warm--I told her I can't help it if my hands and feet are icicles, but she disagrees and says that, in fact, I can help it. When I asked her how, she said "STAY WARM." She then covered me with blankets, turned a bunch of heat lamps on me, stuck me with needles and let me take a nap. I now love her and am going back next week. Her plan is to use the needles to help make my contractions stronger, while reducing the pain I feel. (I see you rolling your eyes again, Mom.) Except instead of "help", she pronounced it "harp" so it took me a while to figure out what she was saying.

Ok, I guess this is enough boring information about the last few weeks of someone's pregnancy. See why I don't blog more often? I'm only thinking of you, people.

Speaking for God

The Huffington Post has been covering the story of the California Pageant Contestant who announced that the Bible is very clear about how God will punish homosexuality with death.

What I want to know is how you can effectively argue with people who just cite God and the Bible as their main sources of information. There seems to be no way to combat "faith" with "logic." Or even compassion, in this case.

I do respect people's rights to their opinions, so that's not my issue with this. As a college professor once drilled into my head "If you don't agree with freedom of speech for speech you don't agree with, then you don't agree with freedom of speech." I just wonder what kind of education or argument would sway this woman and many like her.

Getting Closer

We bought a crib! This means the baby doesn't have to sleep in a drawer or in the bathtub. And it means that I've already ruined the punchline to this whole story. This is how you can tell I studied Journalism in college. I just can't bury the lead.

It was a momentous occasion...after several trips to actual furniture stores which housed actually new cribs, we decided to take a spin on Craigslist and see what we could find. At first I was overwhelmed--did I really want to take time out of my napping and Ben&Jerry's-eating schedule to go to people's homes and touch their used furniture? Though the answer was no, I forced myself to make one appointment in Alameda, which is across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. Rob and I went there on Monday night and were met at the door by an adorable woman named Sue who started to hug me before realizing it would be a little weird. We shook hands.

The crib was in five pieces on the floor, and the house was very clean and nicely decorated, which mattered to me since we were potentially leaving with a mattress. In New York City, this would never happen: rampant bed bugs. The crib had previously been the property of a three-year-old who was only referred to as Naked Man. Naked Man made one appearance at the top of the stairs while we were examining the crib, and he really did live up to his nickname. But it was more comforting than if they'd referred to him as Bed Bug Man.

We made a quick and easy decision to take the crib, and talked with Naked Man's parents for a little bit longer. When we left, the woman did hug me.

Here are some photos of the crib, which Rob put together that evening, along with a photo of our glider, which I put together that evening, because I will not be outdone.

Sweet

You know how they say girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice? I'm relatively certain that our baby is just made of sugar, since that's all I eat. When she arrives, I'm probably going to take a bite out of her if she smells like ice cream. Let's just hope the cravings have passed by then.

Rob and I spent the weekend in Tahoe: he skiied for a while each day, and I wandered around, reading by the fireplace, drinking hot chocolate, and debating whether to spend a fortune getting a manicure and pedicure at our hotel (what could one possibly do to make a pedicure worth $60 when I can get one for $15 in San Francisco? I opted to live with my unkempt hands and toes for at least a few more days.)

It was a beautiful and relaxing weekend, and we tried to wrap our heads around the fact that it was truly our last pre-baby vacation. There was lots of talk about when our daughter will start skiing (apparently, when she's three) and we watched all of the families with small children to see how it worked. I must say, there were many very polite kids on the mountain. A two-year-old boy saw me sitting in a chair as he got off the elevator and wanted to know if I needed him to hold the door for me. Another toddler was walking past me up the stairs and excused himself as we went by each other. Who were these tiny gentlemen, I wondered? And how do you get a kid who is so well-behaved? I want one.

34 weeks

On Sunday we went on a hike with Liz, Rob and Rigby. I picked the hike--it was designated as an easy/moderate 3.5 miles and, despite being nearly 8 months pregnant, I thought I could handle it. And I could--if by "handle it" you mean stopping every 3-5 minutes to do some Lamaze breathing before continuing.

This is me and Rob at the top of the hike, which took us up about 800 feet and through the woods past some amazing waterfalls. Rigby was allowed to go off leash at one point and immediately dug up an old chicken bone.

WAAAAAARRRRRRRRR

Not really. I just wanted to share this article from The New Yorker, in case you haven't read it. The part that really interested me:

“The Hurt Locker” has taken in a little more than sixteen million dollars. “Avatar” took in eleven million. The difference is, the figure for “The Hurt Locker” represents the totality of its receipts in the seven months since it was released. The “Avatar” number represents only the most recent weekend’s take. In Italy.

The crux of the article is the new voting process for the Oscars--the author makes the case that it favors a win for The Hurt Locker. I guess I'll watch the Academy Awards again this year.

Deepish Wednesday

In one of those expected turn of events, I can no longer squeeze into spaces that once used to easily fit me. In restaurants, I get stuck between chairs. Entering my house, I never seem to open the door wide enough. I walk into walls. And, in related news, food seems to land on me, where once it might have fallen on a napkin in my lap. If I could eat more elegantly, this last one would not be an issue.

When not eating or trying to navigate the increasingly tighter world, I am often asleep. It's hard to stay awake for more than 8 hours at a time, which made my most recent sleepless night (last night) even more unpleasant. Rob is out of town, so Smokey wandered the house looking for him FOR HOURS. His rotation included stomping into the bedroom and hopping over me, meowing and walking around until he had established that Rob was, in fact, not there. This did not stop him from checking every 15 minutes, usually just as I was about to fall asleep. Smokey, despite being 7 pounds, manages to walk like a baby elephant through the house. Emma punctuated his antics by howling into the night at random intervals for totally unknown reasons. She doesn't share Smokey's deep connection to Rob, so I'm pretty sure she was just being an asshole.

Last night I also finished Kurt Vonnegut's Armageddon in Retrospect. I loved it--it opens with a letter from Vonnegut's son Mark, who calls his dad "Kurt" and who also calls him out on some of his more nonsensical thoughts:

"I'm as celibate as fifty percent of the heterosexual Roman Catholic clergy."

What? Mark Vonnegut called this "a sentence with no meaning." But then there are so many sentences full of meaning, that you just kind of go with it. There's a letter home after Vonnegut was released from a POW camp in Germany, and the short fiction that follows is all connected to his experience of World War II. The book is almost exclusively about war, which is a theme that ran through our house this weekend. No, we're not fighting, but we went to see Avatar, rented The Hurt Locker, and had friends over to watch that annual battle known as The Super Bowl (was it just me or did the commercials totally suck? I have reached my yearly quota of Budweiser ads, for sure.)

I'm thinking the theme for this week should be a little different, maybe fluffier and not so bomb-oriented. It could help the cats sleep easier, if nothing else.

These are the people in your neighborhood

Liz and Rob-Stan have officially moved to San Francisco! Liz left my apartment on Friday morning, taking with her all of her weird bags and baskets full of clothes (whatever happened to suitcases?) and I was immediately devastated. She moved HALF A MILE away, but I was still all sad that she's not going to be around to drink tea and read on the couch with me, or download about our days while I eat chocolate ice cream for dinner.

So, because I missed her so much, I made her come over yesterday to help with Ellie's baby shower. Liz did all the decorations, making little phallic blue balloon bouquets, since Ellie and Eric are having a boy. It was a lovely shower with lots of fun gifts, some that Ellie might actually steal from the baby.



On Saturday, I went to Liz and Rob-Stan's new apartment with Rob and my Aunt Carolyn, who came to town to make cupcakes for the baby shower (and also to take a week-long painting class in the city.) It was completely empty and we sat on the floor, chatting, until my stomach started eating itself and I announced that we had to leave for lunch right then or the baby was going to stick a little fist through my belly button and try to grab Rigby's dog treats.

When we came back, several hours later, the movers had arrived and left, and seriously, the place looked amazing. I'll post some pictures soon. This means that my sister and I are living in the same city for the first time in 14 years. Some people take it for granted that their family members will always be close by. But since I've made the decision to hopscotch all around the country, it's not something I've ever been able to count on. And with the baby coming, I am feeling extra grateful to have my sister around, someone who I can call when I need a babysitter or just have some balloons that need blowing up.

But I haven't managed to shower

Rob left on a business trip at 4:30 this morning. This happens sometimes, and normally does not phase me. But today, as soon as his alarm went off, my brain went into a bad, bad place. A planning place. A place that does not allow sleep to continue. So I got up and made cereal and read a childbirth book, while thoughts of everything I need to do in the coming days and weeks marched a panicked little parade through my mind.

This might be ok except I have childbirth class tonight for 3 hours, and I would really, really rather not pass out in the middle of it. I can just see the teacher dimming the lights to show us one of the highly educational films where some poor woman gives birth to a 4-lb placenta that looks like Jabba the Hut and when the lights go on, there I am in my comfy chair, eyes closed, sucking my thumb.*

I have been so tired lately, so it does not make me happy to bounce out of bed at ridiculous hours due to bouts of nervous energy. But I'm sure it is serving a purpose. A blog post! Evidently, it just requires NOT SLEEPING to get it all done. I'll keep this in mind when the baby comes.



*I don't actually suck my thumb. But the thing about the Jabba placenta is true--from last week's class.

Everyone Naps

Pot luck, anyone?

Rob and I have our own wireless network in the house, aptly--if not super creatively--named RG's Network. But if that wasn't working, here are the other networks in the neighborhood that we seem to have available to us: Goldhammer wireless, bitches and niggas, fattire, and GayRepublicofDrugafornia. I can't wait to meet more of the neighbors.

Deepish Wednesday

Hi guys,
Sorry I'm bad at this blogging thing lately. It's not you, it's me. My mind and my days (not to mention my belly) are very full, and I keep hoping that somehow the blog will just populate itself with words--not just any words, but the words that really describe what's going on with me here in San Francisco, in my life of working at home and being 31 weeks pregnant. And waking up at least 4 times a night to pee, or because it's raining really loud. Or because, like last night, I really needed a bowl (ok, two bowls) of cereal. But it turns out that if I don't write this blog, no one does. So that's good to know.

I haven't really had any weird cravings during my pregnancy, with the exception of being completely obsessed with sugar. But that's not really weird, not anything fun like craving things that totally do not go together: chocolate and avocados, sausages and cottage cheese, black beans and strawberries. What lunatic would eat those things together? They sound gross.

Tonight as I was walking home from yoga, the air smelled exactly like cannoli. So for three blocks I obsessed over how much I wanted to eat cannoli. But we didn't have any cannoli at home. So I ate couscous. I never said it was an interesting story.

My sister has moved in with us, which is pretty amazing. She got a job in San Francisco at an ad agency, and swiftly left her life, dog and boyfriend in Los Angeles. Boyfriend Rob (you may know him as Stan) and dog Rigby are coming up in February and then we will all be one big happy family, although they will have their own house, because otherwise I think Rigby would eat our cats. Sometimes I think I would like to feed them to a dog, when they're screaming and running around at night because they spent their whole day sleeping, just waiting for their chance to torment us. But Liz and Rob appear to want their own place, and I have to respect that. Smokey and Emma will get a reprieve. For now. Rob's tactic when they're acting like animals is to throw balled up socks at them. When I get up in the morning, I am greeted by our long hallway filled with sock balls.

Among the things I wonder: how will the cats react to having a baby in the house? Will Rob throw sock balls at the baby when she wakes us up at night? Does my brain stop working correctly after a certain time of day...like, around now?

Well hello there

Rather than start this post with my list of excuses for why I haven't blogged (family in town, baby books to read, thank you cards to write, walls to stare at), I will just tell you that I still have this odd experience at least a few times a day where I realize I'm pregnant. It's as though I can go through many hours (or even 15-minute increments) where I just...forget. And then I'll see myself in the mirror, or I'll try unsuccessfully to put on socks without sitting down, and it floods through me again, this feeling that "oh my god, there's really a baby in there." And what I'm trying to keep from happening is the next thought, which goes "oh my god, there's a baby in there and some day she's going to be 4 years old, and 9 years old, and 17 years old..." You get the point. There's really no need to rush this, but I just can't believe that this person is coming soon--in roughly 10 weeks--to change my life forever.

So that's been fun and interesting, and is helping me grasp the fact that I do really need to read those baby books (because that part earlier about how I've been reading them is kind of a lie. But I do have them here, so that seems to be a good start.) In fact, I'm mostly focused on the birth itself at this point, and on how I hope it will go, and who will be there with me: Rob, a doula who is yet to be selected, a doctor/midwife (or both), and the random people who will be gawking at me from the door, as I have chosen to give birth in a teaching hospital.

I suspect I won't even notice the people at the door, but the other members of the birth team are pretty important to me. This weekend I was explaining to our visiting family members what a doula is, because--despite the widespread use of doulas as birth attendants--I think for some people it's a pretty foreign concept. To their credit, these people did not act as though I was saying anything silly, and the conversation turned yet again when my brother-in-law said, in all seriousness, "I've also been hearing a lot about tofu. How exactly do you buy that?" Please note, I am not making fun of him. He was just curious.

There's a lot to learn and do, and I would have to be crazy to say that I know everything I will need to know in 10 weeks, or a year, or 17 years. But I plan to take it one step at a time, continue to face my daily surprises, and not be afraid to ask questions. "I've also been hearing a lot about the birth orgasm. How exactly do I get one of those?"

Lucy and Papa

My grandpa sits behind the 607th dog he's ever owned. Her name is Lucy, but we call her Lucifer. She wants to eat you.

But my breath smells delicious

Deepish Thoughts and I are in a bit of an argument. The blog thinks it's not getting enough attention, which is true, but my feeling is that since there are so many areas of my life requiring me right now, the blog has naturally fallen by the wayside. Especially given how busy the holidays were; I was particularly occupied by eating half a pan of peppermint ice cream cake over the course of 4 nights. It's hard work, but I really applied myself and came out the clear victor. And then promptly got a terrible case of hives that I can safely say probably came from the sugar overload. Gross, I know. In fact, I ate so many sweets over the holiday that I might as well have poured a box of granulated sugar directly into my mouth. Still, I wasn't actually sure what the cause of my breakout had been, until I took my spotted arms and legs to yoga, and a midwife who comes to class had a look.

"Have you been eating a lot of new foods, or maybe a lot of sugar?" she asked.

"Ummmmm," I said, like I was trying really hard to remember.

There is something liberating about being pregnant--people tell you to eat what you want (except for my grandmother, who tells me to watch it). And I have stayed fairly healthy, if you just ignore the entire week of Christmas break. Still, when we got back to San Francisco, I ran into my 4-year-old neighbor who looked at me and said "Wow, you are getting really fat!"

No one will tell you the truth like a 4-year-old will.